He belonged to the Makahiil sub-division of Sa'ad Musa sub-clan of the Habr Awal Isaaq clan.

[4] Known as a sharp critic, he would start the famous Deelley poetic chain in response to repression in Somalia under Siad Barre's rule.

[6][7][8] In the 1970s Gaariye independently discovered the Somali prosodic system around the same time as fellow literary scholar Abdillahi Diiriye Guled.

[10] Gaariye worked closely with British linguist Martin Orwin in the later years of his life to transcribe and translate many of his best poems into English.

His translated poems were published post humously alongside Hadraawi's and some other prominent contemporary Somali poets in a 2018 biography of Gaariye.